Outlook Drag&Drop Wishlist :D

[lukescammell]

First of all, I'd like to say THANK YOU to Donald for granting my wish so quickly. I can now drag and drop emails from Outlook 2003 (apparently Express works as well) into any directory I like in XY. I only asked for this yesterday?

Next, I'd like to apologise for being the catalyst for the 5.20.0003 crashes. Hopefully you can all forgive me for this once it's fixed

Code: Select all

v5.20.0003 - 04.10.06 19:34
    + First attempt at dropping items from Outlook/Outlook Express.
      *** NOTES ***
      - I could only test dropping emails from Outlook Express, and that
        works fine: an EML file is created in the dropped path, named
        after the Subject of the email.
      - I have no idea what will happen if you drag emails or attachments
        from Outlook 2003... you tell me.
      - As for now, it's only implemented for the list view.
      - The filename is automatically generated from the contents.
        There's no prompt.
      - Any existing file of that name is overwritten without mercy or
        questions.

Please don't think I'm being impatient here, I'm just committing my thoughts to screen while I can still remember them.

1) Please can the file name be customisable? I would love to be able to drag information out from the headers to create a file naming scheme.

2) Emails with and without attachments work PERFECTLY from 2003 I have a batch of .msg files sitting on my network staring at me right now.

3) List view only is fine by me, but I'm sure you'll implement it in the tree view soon enough as you are very complete and like to have XY working logically.

4) A prompt if a file by the same name already exists in the destination of the file being copied. Also, a toggleable(sp?) option somewhere that allows auto-incrementation(sp?).
So if you have Email1.eml it would auto-increment to Email1.1.eml or something. Perhaps this could be configured in the same place as the file name customising (point 1)?

Again, please let me say that I'm not *trying* to be demanding in any way shape or form. Also, I'm sure that some/all of these ideas have already come to you. This is a wish list afterall

[admin]

First of all, I'd like to say THANK YOU to Donald for granting my wish so quickly. I can now drag and drop emails from Outlook 2003 (apparently Express works as well) into any directory I like in XY.
...

You are welcome, especially if you buy 9 copies.

All your further comments on Outlook Drag&Drop are agreed and about to be done. Probably tomorrow.

[lukescammell]

All your further comments on Outlook Drag&Drop are agreed and about to be done. Probably tomorrow.

\o/

[admin]

Okay, all done. Almost... you just have to take one "no" at least

1) Please can the file name be customisable? I would love to be able to drag information out from the headers to create a file naming scheme.

No, not now. This will currently remain to be the OS standard which is to take the email's subject as filename AFAIK.

[lukescammell]

Oh poop. That's the one I wanted the most! That'll teach me to ask for so many things at once...

P.S. Thank you for all the other parts

[admin]

Oh poop. That's the one I wanted the most! That'll teach me to ask for so many things at once...

P.S. Thank you for all the other parts

If you don't buy the promised copies I take the other parts out, too.

[admin]

1) Please can the file name be customisable? I would love to be able to drag information out from the headers to create a file naming scheme.

Explain this idea again, please.

And what happened to the orders?

[lukescammell]

1) Please can the file name be customisable? I would love to be able to drag information out from the headers to create a file naming scheme.

Explain this idea again, please.

Emails contain information in the header that would be (optionally) useful to have in the file name of the dragged email, for instance, the date the email was sent/received. The ability to add the date of the email, automatically to the beginning of the filename would be very useful, as you then basically have a very easy way to archive important emails. So an email with subject "Email Subject" that was sent on 13th October 2006 at 13:20:33 could be named 2006-10-13_13-20-33 Email Subject.msg. Obviously, the ability to configure this along the lines of your current Rename Special function would be the best and give a high degree of flexibility.

While the date would be the most useful to me right now with regard to the company, I can see other headers such as sent, to, from, importance etc also being useful.

Sorry if this isn't very clear, I'm trying to meet a deadline right now before a week's holiday (YAY!) and don't have a lot of time to break this down logically. Perhaps in a week or so I can be a little more descriptive.

The orders will be a lot easier to get when I can set this "autonaming" for the other users in the office so all they have to do is drag and drop I really am working hard on the MD to get the orders anyway, just things don't always (rarely) happen as quickly as I would like

[lukescammell]

Just yesterday the one person in the office I've told XY about said to me "When can we buy that software that autmatically names my saved emails for me?" I had to explain to her (the finance lady) that unfortunately XY doesn't do it yet, how sad

I can definitely say there is a demand for this feature here. I do understand you have your own priorities and that this is just one of mine, but I thought I should just remind you of this one every now and then Besides, a lot of businesses use Outlook, so I would imagine more than just the one I work for would find this feature useful

[admin]

Just yesterday the one person in the office I've told XY about said to me "When can we buy that software that autmatically names my saved emails for me?" I had to explain to her (the finance lady) that unfortunately XY doesn't do it yet, how sad

I can definitely say there is a demand for this feature here. I do understand you have your own priorities and that this is just one of mine, but I thought I should just remind you of this one every now and then Besides, a lot of businesses use Outlook, so I would imagine more than just the one I work for would find this feature useful

Okay. If you
(a) provide me the format of those Outlook files, and
(b) guarantee me that this format is reliably there, then
(c) I can extract the info you need and auto-name the files as you wish, then
(d) you can buy a lot of copies.

[lukescammell]

I shall do some research on the outlook MSG format...

[lukescammell]

I'm not a programmer, so this may or may not be helpful...

http://www.fileformat.info/format/outlookmsg/

There also seems to be a LOT of good information in this thread (I know it's Java related, but it might be helpful).

http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?messageID=3752249&

[admin]

I'm not a programmer, so this may or may not be helpful...

http://www.fileformat.info/format/outlookmsg/

There also seems to be a LOT of good information in this thread (I know it's Java related, but it might be helpful).

http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?messageID=3752249&

Okay, that should be enough.

Now explain exactly what you want, please. Which fields you want to see in the filenames. Then I tell you the exact price for it (just kidding)
And could you send some MSG files to experiment. (I don't have Outlook!)

ADD:

So an email with subject "Email Subject" that was sent on 13th October 2006 at 13:20:33 could be named 2006-10-13_13-20-33 Email Subject.msg.

Ah okay, is this still what you want? Since you are currently the only one with this wish you cannot expect a big configuration interface very quickly (unless, of course, you pay me for a special edition). If dropping from Outlook turns out to be such a good market as you suggest, then of course configurability will be available soon.

[lukescammell]

I will get you some files from Outlook at work on Monday and have a little bit of a longer think on exactly what I want the filename to be like. I don't suppose it would be easier to make that filename configurable in the ini file would it?

[admin]

I will get you some files from Outlook at work on Monday and have a little bit of a longer think on exactly what I want the filename to be like. I don't suppose it would be easier to make that filename configurable in the ini file would it?

I have already thought of the hardcore INI-way. But even a configuration has to be configured. So, what would you like to configure (in the order of need from must to would-not-mind)?

I guess:
Some fields like Date, Subject, Author (Sender).
Then the order of fields.
Then the form of specific fields (yyyy-mm-dd; lastname firstname ... etc).
Then maybe a maxlength to crop very large subjects.

It will probably be a template-style configuration, something like this:

Template: <dyyyy-mm-dd_hh-nn-ss> <s80>.msg
Result: 2006-10-13_13-20-33 Email Subject.msg

Dig?